From the instant when the couple realise that their relation is something stronger than mere friendship, their happiness is lost.
Commuters confronting the trivially tragic — but tragic nonetheless — instant when the subway doors close too quickly, severing them from the fortunate ones who made it inside.
No, what sets her off is the instant when the blond wig she's worn for five years to blend in with her neighbors flies off, revealing her alopecia.
In an offline auction, you can bid up to the instant when the gavel comes down, and no one yells, "Cheat".
He tracked in a "stinger" — a pulse of hard-hitting sound — timed to the instant when the bum jumps out, and then watched the result.
In the northern hemisphere, it marked that bleak and lightless instant when the sun was furthest to the south in relation to the equator.
It was in that instant, when the mouse hovered over the button and turned into a hand, that my mind flooded with mistakes from the past, making me question whether they were corrected.
The instant when the egg broke had all the tension you feel when a waiter drops a glass, but none of the accompanying worries that the waiter might lose his job.
Few who were at the diving pool of the Sports Complex will forget the sickening instant when the American Greg Louganis clipped the edge of the diving board with his head yet went on to win.
Here is what it is like to suck on a pill: "He wanted to concentrate fully on that instant when the sublingual tablet phase-shifted from being to not-being".
But if there's anything that history can teach us, it's that the time between now, and the very instant when the clock is stopped on the Belmont Stakes, is a veritable no-mans-land of tattered Triple-Crown dreams.
